Man Sentenced In School District Employee Tax Scheme

A Georgia man has reportedly been sentenced in connection to a scheme to obtain the personal information of school district employees in Connecticut.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Olukayode Ibrahim Lawal was sentenced to about 10 months in prison, time he’s already served in New Haven, Connecticut.

Lawal was reportedly indicted in May 2018 and pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in December.

According to reports, an FBI cyber crime squad and the IRS found that Lawal was using phishing emails and sent requests to various school districts in 2017 to get employees’ personal information and file fraudulent tax returns in their names.

Lawal, 36, gained the attention of federal prosecutors when a Groton Public Schools employee received an email, appearing to be from a co-worker, asking for W-2 tax information for all system employees.

The employee responded to the request by and sent personal information of about 1,300 employees to Lawal.

From there, the Internal Revenue Service received about 100 suspicious Form 1040 filings from those employees. According to reports the tax returns claimed $491,737 in refunds.

According to federal prosecutors Lawal, a Nigerian national, ran a similar scam on a hospital in which 33 fraudulent tax returns were filed. Those efforts were unsuccessful in claiming $314,184 in refunds.